from the get-some-backdoor-searches-to-go-with-the-front-door-raids dept

Internal advocates for joining the America’s spy agencies—known as the Intelligence Community or the IC—focus on the potential benefits to the agency’s work on counterproliferation, money laundering, counterterror, and cybercrime. The official added that joining the IC could also be useful for the agency’s immigration enforcement work––in particular, their efforts to find and arrest undocumented immigrants with criminal arrest warrants (known in ICE as fugitive aliens).

At this point, no one other than a few ICE officials really wants this to happen. Privacy and accountability activists say the last thing the White House should do is give the agency access to warrantless surveillance. ICE is a domestic enforcement agency and has no need to root around in foreign-facing data collections. The agency, however, feels foreign intel -- along with the unmentioned backdoor searches of domestic communications -- could aid it in tracking down drug traffickers, money launders, and various cybercriminals.

But it shouldn't have direct access. Nor should it ever really need it. Information sharing has been expanded, thanks to the last president, which means ICE likely already receives second-hand info from other IC members like the DHS, FBI, and DEA. Former government officials are wary of the idea of direct intel access, noting that it would result in more complications, rather than better immigration and customs enforcement. Peter Vincent, ICE's general counsel under Obama, had this to say:

Unlike most intelligence agencies, which focus on gathering information about America’s adversaries, ICE’s agents and officers deal with federal courts every day. If they use classified material to generate leads, that information could be inadmissible in court. Both the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration, which are in the Intelligence Community, deal with this issue. Adjusting would be a challenge for ICE.

Vincent said this could create “many potential mission creep spectres, especially in this current climate,” and that he doesn’t think it would be necessary for ICE to join the Intelligence Community.

We've seen how well dips into NSA stores has worked for these two law enforcement agencies. Parallel construction becomes the rule, rather than the exception, and cases are far more likely to be dropped if defense lawyers and judges start asking too many questions about presented evidence.

Another former DHS intelligence official claims the added intel would do little more than "complicate the architecture," making it harder for ICE to do its job. If critical information needs to be shared with ICE, it could be done by bringing the head of ICE in on intel meetings, rather than adding ICE into the IC mix and adding yet another set of minimization rules to intel sharing.

Bad idea or not, the push for ICE to join the Intelligence Community comes at the right time. While Trump has been extremely critical of other IC components -- particularly the FBI -- he's very fond of his domestic immigration enforcers, having given them free rein to enforce the law in whatever way they see fit.

[T]he law limits sharing of collected information about American citizens, resident aliens and other “US persons.” As one question on the quiz highlights, the CIA cannot share such information outside the intelligence community. It’s important, then, to know which agencies are within the fold.

The National Security Agency, Coast Guard and Department of Energy qualify as “IC elements”, the latter two via their intelligence arms. As a local police force, the NYPD does not make the cut.

This comes from a CIA quiz obtained by the ACLU as part of an FOIA lawsuit. That the CIA would single out the NYPD on its test is significant. The NYPD likes to believe it's an intelligence agency on par with the FBI and CIA. Despite having zero reason to do so, the NYPD sends its officers all over the world to gather intelligence after terrorist attacks. No one has ever asked the NYPD to do this, but it continues to invite itself to various ground zeroes, where it is usually greeted with a mixture of befuddlement and anger.

The CIA, however, remains inextricably (and perhaps, willfully) entangled with the Little Intelligence Agency That Isn't. Two former CIA employees were instrumental in setting up its "Demographics Group," which engaged in pervasive surveillance of New York City Muslims. The privacy and civil liberties violations this group engaged in made the "intelligence" gleaned so toxic not even the FBI would touch it.

The CIA also expressed concerns about the gathered data -- not so much out of concern for violated rights, but because the data gathering seemed to be its own end. A senior CIA official discussed partaking in the NPYD's gathered info, but stated that the only thing "impressive" about the collection was its size, not its usefulness.

A 2011 CIA Inspector General report found that the uselessness of the data didn't stop at least one CIA employee from exploiting gaps in CIA policy to view "unfiltered" Demographics Group intelligence even though the collection contained "no clear foreign intelligence relevance."

Most likely due to relationships with the two former CIA employees heading the NYPD's Demographics Group, the CIA has made the most of its lax policies in order to work directly with this particular local law enforcement entity.

Since 2002, the CIA has assigned four officers to provide “direct assistance” to the NYPD. Their titles and duties ranged from “Special Representative to the NYPD” to training analyst on counterterrorism. An NYPD detective also received operational training at the CIA.

The undated test is likely part of CIA rule changes as a result of the IG report. What little is left unredacted deals with legal authorities related to domestic surveillance, in addition to pointing out which domestic entities the CIA can lawfully share its intelligence with. The NYPD isn't one of them, no matter how much it believes its proximity to ground zero gives it the right to rub elbows with the intelligence community's big boys.